This week is "Local Newspaper Week" – an opportunity to celebrate the many local newspapers, including the Western Gazette, which report on and often participate in the life of local communities right across the country.
While national newspapers have been very much under pressure over recent years, not least from the internet, local newspapers have tended to do better. Much local news simply cannot be accessed on the internet, and there are many of us who do not wish to read most of our stories on a computer or on a mobile phone!
Local newspapers also have a better reputation with the public – they are more trusted than the national media. In my experience, this is usually justified – local newspapers are more likely to write fair and balanced articles which do not attempt to skew the news just to get a sensational story.
While national newspapers often behave with no sense of responsibility, merely writing as dramatic a story as possible and then moving on, local newspapers know that they need to be trusted by their local communities and they know that they have a responsibility to report the news in an accurate and impartial way.
This does not mean, of course, pulling punches. Newspapers have to be able to report stories that not all of us will like. The key is not whether censorship is applied to "hush up" stories, it is whether stories are reported in an unbiased and fair way.
Local newspapers are particularly valued because they are often the only way of receiving genuinely "local" news. TV stations often claim to have a "local" news slot, but when you live in Yeovil or Chard and discover that all of the stories are about Bristol or Cornwall, the notion of "local" doesn’t mean very much! I have, in fact, never lived anywhere where I have found that much of the "local" TV news was really relevant to me.
Of course, local radio also often covers "local" news, and this is often very important and useful for picking up major local stories in a timely way. However, local radio is increasingly under tough budget constraints, and the news staff are often unable to get out of their studios very much to collect local news and to ferret out stories. With a news programme on every hour, a large part of the job of local radio news staff is just to keep up with the regular broadcasts rather than to track down new stories.
Local newspapers are, therefore, the crucial forum for local news. They also provide a community news service, which is valued by many people, and an opportunity for debate and discussion of local issues and controversies. Without local newspapers, people would struggle to find out what was happening locally, and the identity and coherence of local communities would be undermined.
But this is a particularly tough time for local newspapers, which depend tremendously on advertising revenue rather than the "cover price" of the paper. When you consider what is advertised in local newspapers – property, cars and jobs make up a BIG percentage of advertising – it is no surprise that the present recession has been so damaging. Indeed, many local newspapers are struggling or going out of business.
We must hope that as the economy begins to grow again, as it probably will do by next year, advertising in our local newspapers will turn up once more.
In the meantime, I would urge all readers to continue to support our local newspapers – like local post offices and many other valued local services, it really is a case of "use them or lose them." It would be a disaster for local communities if local papers were squeezed out of business in the present recession. Once lost, it would not be easy to get these papers back.
That is one reason why, this year of all years, Local Newspaper Week is SO important,
Ever,
David.